Context No. 3934 of 4322 · Hosea
Context · Reflection
Hosea 3:1-5: in context
1The LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods, and love cakes of raisins.” 2So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. 3I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the prostitute, and you shall not be with any other man. I will also be so toward you.” 4For the children of Israel shall live many days without king, without prince, without sacrifice, without sacred stone, and without ephod or idols. 5Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and shall come with trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.
God gives Hosea a hard and beautiful command: go again, love a woman who is loved by another and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the people of Israel though they turn to other gods. Hosea's wife had been unfaithful, and God tells him to go and love her again, to buy her back. And so Hosea redeems her, paying a price to bring her home, and calls her to faithfulness.
The whole strange episode is a living picture of God's love for his unfaithful people. Israel had played the adulteress, turning to other gods, and yet God's love did not give up on her; he purposed to buy her back, to redeem her, and to draw her home again. This is astonishing love, a love that keeps loving the unfaithful, that pays the price to reclaim the one who wandered. And it points ahead to the greater redemption, in which God, in Christ, paid the ultimate price to buy back a people who had gone astray. There is comfort here for every wandering heart. God's love is not the fragile love that gives up when betrayed; it is a redeeming love that seeks out the unfaithful and pays to bring them home.
Do I know the depth of God's redeeming love, a love that keeps loving the unfaithful and pays the price to buy back the wanderer, and have I let that love draw me home to him?
Sources
- Hosea 3:1: "Go again, love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods."
- Hosea 3:2: "So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley."
- Hosea 3:5: "Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king."